


Offstage

by 8ball



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, SBURB, young heros without guidance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-14 04:53:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4551267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8ball/pseuds/8ball
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For John, it was being unprepared.</p>
<p>For Jake, it was thinking himself prepared.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Offstage

 

 

 

You were a romantic in the most cliché of ways, and had the desire of love long before you fully grasped the true concept. This led you, ultimately, to a truth you were not prepared for. And so when it came down to the act of loving another person fully, you were lost.

Your father had loved you, and you had loved him. It was a simple thing for a child to love a parent when a parent provided comfort, provided love back. It was even simpler to continue to love your parent as you grew and his love towards you did not seem to ever waver. It was just as simple to feel heartbreak at the sight of his corpse, and the beginning of your understanding that love was fragile, harsh, and terrifying.

 

 

~

 

You were a fan of the fantastical and the impossible. You idealized the already idealized things in life given to you by film. It left you with an expectation of certain things, and of those things, you found an expectation of love.

You followed the examples set for you instead of your heart. Because the hero and the beautiful companion always kiss at the end and tell each other they love each other and so that must be love, right? If they call it love, that’s what it is. Holding hands and smiling and kissing and having sex, those things had to mean it was love, right?

Why did it matter if it didn’t feel all that great or fantastic? You were doing it like you had seen, so it had to be right.

It had to be love. It had to be love because it looked like love. It had to be love. You had believed it was love.

And it was a lie.

 

 

~

 

Your mind had become a vault, and it had been shut by your very own hands and the key thrown into an imaginary ocean where you assumed safety in its disappearance. And your heart, you poor, frightened heart, it danced to the sound of hope and tried to break through your chest and sing with the cries of a forgotten love left in torment and loneliness. And there was no key for you heart, no way of keeping it completely locked up, so you did the best you could and barricaded it in. you let it dance, rattling your chest and burning holes inside you. It was the only thing you had to offer it, so you let it dance to the sound of hope.

The vault would sometimes break, and out poured the memories of love and the pain it brought, and with each break your heart leapt at the chance to be remembered. For how could you forget the very reason you had confined your poor heart in the first place when the anguish of love lost returned to you?

 

 

~

 

You had played the starring role in your own romance and now you were off stage, trying to differentiate yourself from the actor. You had played love, you had played the role of being in love, and now, with no lines memorized and no one to direct you, you no longer had any sense of what was real and what was fake. You had really and truly believed in the love you had for him, and now it was just a collection of shots taken from a screen and shown before your eyes and what you saw? You saw two actors. You saw yourself, and you saw Dirk, and you saw a falseness to every kiss, every kind word, every touch. You had desired love, and your premature exposure to what was so very deeply instilled on you as love had left only one plausible explanation for you.

Love did not exist, and therefor no matter how much you searched you would never find it.

 

 

~

 

When you found him he was cracked. A harsh crack that grew in all directions and needed repairing, and you knew not how to make such repairs. His heart that been thrown around and eventually had hit the floor and become damaged, only to be stepped on repeatedly without any protection. His suffering was accepted and quiet, but only from him. You did not accept his pain, and throwing your heart aside you dived into his, and with cautious, trembling fingers you helped him. The cracks would cut up your hands and you hid the damage well from him, for you could not describe the feeling you had when he smiled so very affectionately at you.

 

 

~

 

He was your savior. He was the person you had cried out for at the worst times but had never had a name for. His words are as soft as his touch and when he touches your heart you only flinch at the beginning. You felt and understood his pain, and you realized that his love had existed, and he was capable of love, and therefore love was existent, was _possible_. You allowed yourself to hope, because you had no love to lose. He hid his heart, but you could see it, and its honesty made you weep. He thought you were crying in your own pain, for he had said you had reason, but no, his pain was so drastically different from yours, so held together and ignored and his love was real. He was real in every way you could not have expected and the feelings he gave to you were your first of a kind.

He was easy to love, for he made love easy.

 

 

~

 

He had started off so small, so wounded, but never had you pitied him. However, he scared you in ways you didn’t want him to see, and what scared you even more was his ability to see that he scared you. He told you he didn’t expect to be loved back, didn’t deserve it or understand it enough yet. Said he was so very happy to have finally found the feeling and to be given the feeling by you. With fingers cut and bleeding still from the shards of his heart you had grasped your own chest and begged _please, please, please do not fall apart._ Oh how your poor heart had cried for his love and how cruel you were to refuse it in secret with a smile on your face as he told you he was fixed.

 

 

~

You were delicate because even though you had been broken and he had repaired you he was so much more susceptible to destruction. So fearful of the pain from his past and so used to the emptiness in his chest he now appeared lost. His hands were cut and scarred from your own damages but they were also empty. You filled them with yours, feeling the bumps of his still healing wounds and the harshness of the stretched flesh. You brought your lips to each cut and with the brush of your lips you whispered your love into his skin. He cried as you filled him with your love, because you didn’t deserve it anyways, and had now known what it felt like and could find it again, but him? So sweet and unwilling to serve himself, you gave him yours.

Tears never suited him. His eyes were already the color of clear water.

 

~

 

You were a romantic, but a timid romantic. There were no great love sonnets bursting from your lips and no acts of sickening sweetness you desired to preform. When it came down to the act of loving another person fully, you were no longer lost but the map you had was vague and torn all around. But Jake never did pay much mind to maps, and he had told you again and again that its not really getting lost if you want to explore somewhere new. Yes it was terrifying, and your heart still so fragile, but with him it did not seem so outlandish to be a hopeless romantic.

 

 

~

 

 

You were a fan of the fantastical and the impossible. But you could now see the line between expectation and reality. More importantly, you could find the fantastical and the impossible within reality. It was difficult, but not out of reach.

You followed your heart because you knew how to now. The hero and the beautiful companion didn’t always kiss at the end and tell each other they loved each other. It wasn’t something that had to happen with every relationship. Your heart could decide on its own who you wanted to kiss, and if you ever did want to tell someone you loved them.

Sometimes it was love, and sometimes it wasn’t love. It wasn’t easy, but it wouldn’t be worth it if it were simple. You were sitting offstage now, watching the performers and seeing your past self, and by your side was John.

You’re not sure what it looked like to everyone else, and you didn’t know if you really cared. It might look like love, it might not. But you saw it in his smile and you felt it in your contact and you think to yourself, this is love.

And it is not a lie.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
